InPark Magazine: Theme parks constantly strive to improve the customer experience. In order to measure their effectiveness at meeting customer needs, they often employ customer satisfaction surveys. These tools help managers determine customers’ attitudes in general – and more specifically, their levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In recent years, it has been suggested that examining the extreme emotions of delight and outrage might be a better approach to understanding the customer experience. Prior studies defined customer delight as an emotion composed of joy, exhilaration, and thrill [1]. Beyond understanding the meaning of customer delight, it’s imperative to understand what delights (and, alternatively, enrages) customers in the theme park setting. We are assuming that theme park operators would naturally prefer transporting their guests to a state of “joyful and thrilled.”
3 comments:
So none of this information is new, right? But it is still pretty cool. It's cool more because of the way the information was gathered than anything else. We know that a dysfunctional attraction is going to piss people off, but here is the hard data that says "ride" and "down" appear together the most in 1-star reviews. We know that people love short wait times, but here is solid proof that a guest who feels they've gotten great value out of their day will give 5 stars. What we find here is that guests love great rides and shows, positive employee interaction, good food, reasonable prices, short wait times, and family time. They hate when things break down, long lines, expensive items, poor food, negative employee interaction, and poor maintenance. Surprising? No, but it is interesting to see it backed up by the same words in many people's comments. I am more interested in how companies can take this data (and perhaps the more interesting data that is surely in the report) and make legitimate adjustments to their experiences. I find "Therefore, managers should pay close attention to the design of new and creative attractions, and the renovation or replacement of those that are no longer delighting customers" to be a complete and total cop out. Have you ever read a more obvious statement?
The sentence that stood out to me the most in this article was "Therefore, managers should pay close attention to the design of new and creative attractions, and the renovation or replacement of those that are no longer delighting customers." The design of the park has to be appealing and molded to the view and eye of the general public, the average theme park attendee, not to the perhaps vastly creative mind of the designer. Sometimes artists' ideas are just too out-there for some people, and this is true for many things, which is what this article got me thinking about. I still do not see the art in modern art pieces that are just blank canvases and a line or solid colored squares. When I think of this idea of appealing to the public and theatre I think of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. This show was without a doubt beautiful – it simply looked so. But the type of music and kind of confusing storyline that came with it did not facilitate a large enough audience, which is part of the reason the show eventually closed. My friends and I referred to the show as a "required taste". It was nothing like a traditional musical, and that was probably very off putting for those who did not expect it. In the end, along with the casting problem, the show suffered for it. The audience's "delight" must also be accounted for in the creation of theatre art looking to exist for a long time. Unfortunately, the world is not always ready for new, radical, out of the box artist ideas, which is a shame, because I think we could use some of that right now.
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